Author: Shirley A. Solanka
The three of us – my husband, my son, and I – were on a summer vacation, when one morning, while walking past the front yards of Ithaca, N.Y. wild with milkweed and purple coneflower, toward one of that city’s famous gorges, I saw a bumper sticker that aroused my sympathy and filled me with recognition:
“How am I driving?
“How does an engine even work?
“How can a loving God cause such agony?”
It is not always easy to have faith when living with bipolar disorder. At times, it seems belief in a loving God or Higher Power is almost impossible. Yet, faith has sustained me during times when it seemed that all hope was truly lost.
Faith has played a central role in my life since childhood, long before I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. When I was a pre-teen, my family attended a fundamentalist Christian church, and the God I learned about there was terrifying. Yet a small part of me knew, intuitively, that this God did indeed love me and all people.
My faith met its first crisis when I had my first episode of bipolar depression at age 17. My parents did not understand what was happening (but then again, neither did I) and I did not receive treatment. Yet believing that God had created me and that therefore I had value sustained me and enabled me to persist in living until the depression passed, regardless of how much my depression insisted I was some sort of freak and failure.
When I was a college student, I rejected fundamentalist Christianity and joined the Episcopal Church, which acknowledges, among other things, the necessity of using the gift of reason in matters of faith. In my new church, I found a clergyman who understood the challenges of living with a chronic mental illness and who offered compassion and support during hospitalizations and afterward. Other parishioners expressed their concern and good wishes for my recovery. But even more than that, they saw my abilities and talents and invited me to engage in the life of the church. I became a lay minister and Sunday school teacher. Experiences like these gave me, and continues to give me, a sense that I am genuinely capable of being part of a community and contributing to that community in meaningful ways.
Having a durable faith has allowed me to reflect deeply on my suffering and that of others. Confronting the ages-old question of why a loving God permits great suffering (a branch of theology known as theodicy) has not provided me with an answer – I now accept that there is no answer available to us in this life – but it has convinced me that we all have a responsibility to do what we can to support others – who are likewise the objects of God’s love – in crisis. Often all that is needed is the ability to listen and offer validation. And, for those in need who are open to faith, to remind them, over and over, that they have dignity and that their suffering has meaning in the eyes of God.
Despite the undeniable fact that bipolar disorder has cost me much in terms of the ability to make my dreams reality, faith has enabled me to have new dreams, to trust that God will create something beautiful and powerful in my life. I often think of the words of Paul in his letter to the Romans, found in the Christian scriptures: “We celebrate in our tribulations knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint us.” (New American Standard Bible)
